Platform bureaucratization as pedagogy in highly platformized classrooms

This article examines the rise of platform bureaucratization in highly digitalized classrooms. Drawing on an ethnographic study in a Swedish lower secondary school, we examine how teachers and students navigate digital platforms, integrated into routine classroom activities such as attendance management, assignment submission, and plagiarism detection, giving rise to bureaucratic forms of teaching and learning. Employing Sefton-Green's concepts of textualization, templatization, and trainability, we explore how platforms impose rule-bound, procedural logics onto educational practices. Our findings suggest that these platform-driven bureaucratic processes, although seemingly mundane, reconfigure teacher-student interactions, redistribute pedagogical authority, and introduce complex layers of administrative work into everyday schooling. The article highlights the critical role of teacher knowledge in navigating, interpreting, and occasionally resisting platform-driven standardization, emphasizing the need for educational approaches that critically engage with the political and normative dimensions of platform infrastructures. By conceptualizing platform bureaucratization as pedagogy, the study contributes to discussions on the implications of educational platformization, calling for pedagogies that equip teachers and students to navigate and shape these evolving digital bureaucratic landscapes critically.